Pierwsze polskie tłumaczenie Luzjad Camõesa
The first Polish translation of Camões’ Lusiads

Summary/Abstract: This year we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Luis deCamões, Portugal’s greatest poet. For a translation scholar, this is a specialoccasion to mention the first Polish translation of The Lusiads, published in1790 by the unjustly forgotten, or rather: unjustly disregarded by posterity,Prof. Jacek Idzi Przybylski. This article aims to recall the achievements ofthe Kraków classical philologist, a translator of V oltaire’s most importantworks, but also of Homer’s Iliad, Virgil’s Aeneid and Georgics, Milton’sParadise Lost, the works of Ovid, Horace, Hesiod… Przybylski’s workis uneven, but the mockery of his contemporaries, including the Enligh-tenment arbiter of elegance Dmochowski, was provoked by his predilec-tion for creating not always fortunate neologisms – let us add, mainly inscientific works, to a much lesser extent literary ones. Dmochowski hadpersonal reasons for his dislike of Przybylski, but this was not noticed byhis contemporaries -– and surprisingly, once a malicious assessment waspopularized, it was thoughtlessly repeated until the end of the 1970s. Theanalysis of the literary merits of Przybylski’s Luzyada, carried out by theauthor of this article, indicates, however, that the aforementioned negativejudgments were extremely hasty. According to the author, this translationis worth restoring to the readership, for several reasons. First, none of thelater translations impress us, and it is difficult to expect that someone inmodern times will make another, more successful attempt. Second, whentranslating old poetry, we have a choice between the Scylla of archaic sty-lization and the Charybdis of modern translation. Przybylski’s 18th-centurytranslation fortunately avoids both dangerous reefs: its antiquity is natural,so it already constitutes a certain added value at the starting point. Whatis more, however, the best fragments of this translation surprise us to thisday with their freshness and originality.

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